Backgrounds

• Rviz2 (short for ROS Visualization 2) is a visualization tool specifically designed for ROS2, providing users with a graphical interface to visualize their robotic systems. By default , it is installed during installation of ROS Humble.
• Manual Installation:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install ros-humble-rviz2

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Real Time Simulated Environment

• Rviz2 allows users to visualize various aspects of a robot’s state, such as sensor data, the robot’s position, and the planned path for navigation.
• This visualization is particularly helpful for debugging and understanding complex robotic systems, as it provides an intuitive way to observe how different components interact with each other.

key features of Rviz2 

• 3D visualization: Rviz2 can render 3D representations of a robot’s environment, enabling users to view sensor data, robot positions, and other relevant information in a more intuitive manner.
• Customizable interface: Rviz2 features a customizable interface, allowing users to add, remove, or rearrange panels and visualizations according to their preferences and requirements.
• Plugin support: Rviz2 supports a wide range of plugins, enabling users to extend its functionality by adding new visualization tools and features tailored to their specific needs.
• Cross-platform compatibility: Rviz2 is designed to work with various operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, and Windows, ensuring that developers can use the tool on their preferred platform.

Startup

• Don’t forget to source the setup file.

$ source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash

• Then start the visualizer

$ ros2 run rviz2 rviz2

Or

$ rviz2

First Window

* The big black window in the middle is the 3D view (empty because there is nothing to see).

* On the left is the Displays list, which will show any displays you have loaded.

* Right now it just contains the global options and a Grid.

Robot model �

• This plugin enables visualization of the robot’s 3D model as defined by its URDF (Unified Robot Description Format) file.
• It provides a graphical representation of the robot’s structure, including its links and joints, allowing you to inspect the robot’s configuration and verify that the model is correctly loaded in RViz 2.

RobotModel Plugin

Key parameters:

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• Visual enabled: Enable/disable the 3D visualization of the model
• Description Source: You can choose between File and Topic.

At the moment of writing this guide the Topic option is not working as expected,

so File is the right option

• Description File: the URDF file that contains the Robot Description zed.urdf or

 zedm.urdf.

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TF �

• The TF plugin provides a visual representation of the entire transform (TF) tree, displaying the position and orientation of all coordinate frames in your system.
• This helps you understand the spatial relationships between different parts of your robot and environment, making it easier to debug frame alignment and connectivity issues.

• For IMU visualization you will need to install.

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• If you are going to visulize Olive IMU data, make sure you change the frame id to “olive” (olive is the default frameid) or if you are not sure what is the device frame id, you can check it in the web_gui dashboard.

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�Move it Assistant (Overview)�

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• The MoveIt Setup Assistant is a graphical user interface for configuring any robot for use with MoveIt. Its primary function is generating a Semantic Robot Description Format (SRDF) file for your robot. Additionally, it generates other necessary configuration files for use with the MoveIt pipeline.
• MoveIt 2 is a powerful and flexible motion planning framework for robotic manipulators.
• Using MoveIt 2 instead of sending manual commands through a terminal window allows for more sophisticated, efficient, and safer motion planning, taking into account obstacles, joint limits, and other constraints automatically.

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Install MoveIt Setup Assistant

• In ROS 2 Humble (Hawksbill), the MoveIt Setup Assistant is already part of the MoveIt 2 ecosystem. You just need to install the moveit metapackage, which includes the Setup Assistant tool.
• Update your package index : sudo apt update
• sudo apt install ros-humble-moveit
• Verify installation : ros2 run moveit_setup_assistant moveit_setup_assistant
• If everything is installed correctly, you should see the MoveIt Setup Assistant GUI open

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